Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Grope the Pope

Mr Grigg returned yesterday from the boss-eyed doctor's after a 'little operation'. He walked in to the kitchen as if he were John Wayne and had just got off his horse. He had tousled hair and the top two buttons of his work shirt were undone . He looked rather raffish, like the man in the Golf GTi advert who lost all his money in Monte Carlo. He smiled. He was still intact.

I had been worried about him. Our doctor is notorious for keeping people waiting. You can be his first appointment of the day and he still manages to be running half an hour late. Mr Grigg had already flounced out of the waiting room a couple of weeks ago when it slowly dawned on him he would be there at least an hour before seeing the doctor. I wish receptionists would tell people the state of play when patients check in.

Mr Grigg hates being kept waiting. He also hates needles. So those two things, together with having what is called a 'tag' removed from a rather intimate place, did not bode well.

There was just a 15-minute wait before he was summoned into the surgery.

The boss-eyed doctor asked Mr Grigg to drop his boxers. The doctor prepared the syringe, looking myopically at it as he did so. Mr Grigg bent down for the doc to administer the injection. The doc was just about to say, reassuringly, 'it's just a little prick'. But looking down with his good eye he quickly said 'er, well, maybe not'.

He then proceeded to get out an implement similar to that used for removing ticks from dogs and cats and whipped the offending tag off, while talking about antiques and grandfather clocks.

Both Mr Grigg and I would like to thank the doctor for keeping a steady hand. I had visions of myself after the operation standing in front of the papal-chair as pictured above with Mr Grigg in it. I would do a 'grope the Pope' test from below, which comes from the time of the legendary Pope Joan, to declare 'he has testicles'. Mr Grigg would then stand up and pontificate.

Fortunately for me (but not necessarily for Mr Grigg), this was not required.